Fixing the Future

Doors open at 5:30 for potluck refreshments, networking, and social hour;  followed by the film at 7:00 pm, followed by a program and discussions after the film.

FIXING THE FUTURE
by David Brancaccio
Presented by Buy Local First
– appearing in person

Alexis De Tocqueville marveled at a 19th century American landscape full of experiments in democracy. It turns out, the 21st century American landscape is dotted with experiments in the economy of the future, if you know where to look. These experiments in bending the economy toward a more sustainable, more widespread prosperity are happening on Main Street, not on Wall Street. But do these projects have the capacity to produce jobs and greater well-being at a time the traditional financial system remains in a perilous state? What happens when you ask people to be the solution to an economic crisis that seems largely out of their hands?

David Brancaccio has created this film around his Alexis de Tocqueville-style meandering journey across America, during which time he films a half dozen businesses and their operators who have made remarkable and creative responses to the economic downturn. Rather than letting the Great Recession take them down, these business people have used it as an opportunity to build a new kind of community-based business which Brancaccio thinks may well be the face of a nascent “new American economy.” He begins in Bellingham, Washington, where he follows the development of Sustainable Connections, one of the most powerful Buy Local First movements in the country. He swings over to North Dakota to interview an agriculture-focused community bank. Next stop is a cooperatively owned laundry in Detroit. There are several additional briefer stops, but he closes the film at The Hour Bank in Portland, Maine. In every sequence, the film focuses on how the new American economy needs to be and will be built around “vibrant local living economies” that understand the critical importance of community and of keeping commerce as local as possible.

There will be time for networking both before and after the film. After the screening, people from Buy Local First will encourage everyone to get involved with projects which contribute to the further building of the various Buy Local First programs in the East Bay.

Wheelchair accessible around the corner at 411 28th Street

$5 donations are accepted